Development Sprints

Monday, March 12th through Thursday, March 15th, 2012.

Development sprints are a key part of PyCon, a chance for the contributors to
open-source projects to get together face-to-face for up to four days of
intensive learning, development and camaraderie. Newbies sit with gurus,
go out for lunch and dinner together, and have a great time while advancing
their project.

What's a sprint?

PyCon Development Sprints are four days of intensive learning and development
on an open source project of your choice, in a team environment.
It's a time to come together with colleagues, old and new, to share what
you've learned and apply it to an open source project.

In the crucible of a sprint room, teaming with both focus and humor, it's
a time to test, fix bugs, add new features, and improve documentation.
And it's a time to network, make friends, and build relationships that go
beyond the conference.

Who's sprinting in 2012?

Can I join a sprint at PyCon?

Yes! Sign up over at the projects page, either for a specific sprint or just in general! You can always work on a different project, and talking to other groups is one of the best things about the sprints.

Can I host a sprint at PyCon?

What's the schedule?

Intro sessions

There will be two pre-sprint sessions on Sunday, March 11, 2012 after the end of the conference talks:

Intro to Sprinting (4:30pm - 5pm)
A plenary session which will begin with a talk explaining the basics of
sprints and how they work at PyCon. That will be followed by a brief
introduction to each project by the sprint leader.

Sprint Tutorials (5pm - whenever)
Sprint leaders will gather sprinters and head to their sprint rooms for
introductory sessions. Sprint leaders will explain their project, walk
through code, help with repository access, etc. This way, come Monday
morning you'll be able to get started coding right away.

Sprints

Sprints themselves will run Monday, March 12 to Thursday, March 15 from early
morning until people leave. Realistically, sprints typically start up around 9am
and run until dinner, but late-nighters and all-nighters are okay (and common).

During the sprints, people often hang out in the #pycon IRC channel on freenode.net to chat, coordinate tasks, and arrange meals.